[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary beganhere.]
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236In August 1879, the Grays[1] were back in Massachusetts after their lengthy European sojourn, and Mrs. Gray’s diary listed a fatiguing (if doubtless engaging) social round. The Grays’ adult children were in and out of the house: daughter Mary and sons Frank, Sam, Rege, and Morris, along with Sam’s wife Carrie, who was expecting their first child.[2] On the dates of these diary entries, Dr. Gray was in reasonably good spirits, but he remained in chronic pain:
Beverly Farms, Sunday, 3 August 1879: It seems to me I never suffered more with heat than yesterday & today; blazing, breathless, sultry August weather, without the delicious sea change, which has heretofore given us such refreshment daily at 11 a.m. – the thermom at 93 & 4 for hours – and even at 5 p. m. up to 87! There is some promise of thunder gusts by & by, which may cool us off a little. Continue reading A modern Wolsey→
Yesterday, Alicia Crane Williams wrote about the steps she takes when indexing the Early New England Families Study Project, showing the extensive work that makes it possible for us to find ancestors in database searches. But what if you’re not creating a database, but writing a book instead?
In the course of your research, have you ever picked up a family history and, to your dismay, found no index? With this experience in mind, if you are writing a family history, you must have an index for your work—at the very least an every-name index. Continue reading A good index guides the reader→
I am in the last phases of preparing eight new Early New England Families Study Project sketches for publication on americanancestors.org in the next week or so. I will give full details about each in an upcoming post.
First, I have to create the indexes. Indexing a database for the NEHGS website involves a lot more than a simple name or place index. Using an Excel spreadsheet, there are nineteen fields of information to be entered for each record. Most are self-explanatory, but I have added a few notes for those that may not be: Continue reading Creating an index→
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from Regina Shober Gray’s diary beganhere.]
The 1878 Gray diary[1] is unusual in filling two full volumes instead of the more usual single one Mrs. Gray devoted to the events in her life. Volume 1 ends with this entry, one that mixes hope and anxiety, sightseeing and sickbeds.
Hotel Monnet, Vevey,[2] Saturday, 3 August 1878: We left Berne yesterday morning (Friday), having really had, on Thursday, from 7½ to 8½ a.m., a full, magnificent view of the whole great range of snow-clad Alps [and] the Bernese Oberland; and a grand sight it was. There they were in their great, white glory, when I opened my shutters, and I rushed up two flights of stairs to call Mary & Sam [Gray], who felt well repaid for being so unceremoniously disturbed in their morning slumbers. Continue reading ‘May we have strength’→
Over the years I have had the honor of corresponding with veterans from the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. But I must admit that corresponding and talking with some of the last widows of the Civil War was a highlight as a historian. It is hard for some now to comprehend that a widow of the Civil War could be living nearly 150 years after the start of the war, early in the twenty-first century. However there have been other widows who married very young to older veterans from previous wars with quite similar stories. Continue reading Remember the ladies→
We have a tendency to envision our ancestors as upstanding members of society. In some cases, they were. In others, they were anything but. I first stumbled across Belle Gunness while researching the Midwestern ancestry of a client, and I’ve been disgusted and oddly intrigued by her ever since.
Belle Poulsdatter was born circa 1860 in Norway. She emigrated to America and settled in Chicago, Illinois, where she married Mads Anton Sorenson in 1884. The couple had several children, two of whom died under unusual circumstances.[1] Then, Mads Sorenson died suddenly on 30 July 1900. Continue reading A Midwestern femme fatale→
When you stop to think about it, boxes make for very special enclosures. I’m sitting here, typing this blog and thinking of the many ways boxes are utilized on a daily basis. For example, there are mail boxes, tool boxes, boxes made for chocolates, shipping boxes, bread boxes, hat boxes, and shoe boxes. The list is long and impressive. Continue reading Beautiful boxes→
Courtesy of Wikipedia.org. Other variations of this map exist, and may be found online.
Recently a patron asked me why he was unable to find information on his ancestors who arrived before the Mayflower. I explained that Plymouth Colony was the first permanently settled colony in New England. What I told him was technically true, but I later discovered that an earlier colony had been established in Maine. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England, France, and Spain all had their eyes on the New World, hoping to take advantage its great wealth of resources. Continue reading Maine’s lost colony→
[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from Regina Shober Gray’s diary beganhere.]
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236While in Zurich, the Grays[1] met some friends from home and had some Philadelphia news:
Hotel Baus-au Lac, Zurich, Sunday, 14 July 1878: The sweet clangor of changing bells fills the air, curiously crossed, to our New England ears, by waltz music from a band near by! The day is overcast & it is no use to go to see an Alpine view under cloudy skies!
Our ride here from Ragaz on Thursday P.M. would have been lonely but for the “rain, that raineth every day” and persecutes us! We skirted the beautiful Wallensee,[2] with its high mountains, exquisite cascades, ruined farms, villas, &c., all wh[ich] we could see & enjoy from our nice 1st class [train] car, wh. we had to ourselves – but the more distant views of opening valley & lovely vistas were shut out; and for part of the ride on [the] borders of Zurich Lake we might as well been looking out over an open, fog-ridden ocean. Continue reading ‘At what a terrible cost’→
[Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared in Vita Brevis on 1 April 2015.]
Barbara (Spooner) Wilberforce, wife of William, and the actual matrilineal descendant of Richard III’s sister.
News of King Richard III’s reburial last week was interesting, especially the stories regarding descendants of the King’s sister, who each placed a white rose (the House of York’s emblem) on his coffin. These four living relatives (Canadian siblings Michael, Jeff, and Leslie Ibsen, and Australian-born Wendy Duldig) have been called Richard’s “closest descendants” in various news articles. Let’s examine this claim.
